The Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston will receive a $690,000 research grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to develop a molecular image-guided system to diagnose and treat small-cell peripheral lung cancer in one sitting.
Dr. Stephen Wong, principal investigator and director of the Center for Biotechnology and Informatics at Methodist, plans to design a 3D visualization and navigation platform that would allow physicians to quickly and accurately guide a needle to small nodules of potential cancer in patients' lungs.
Once in the nodule, molecular imaging would be used to guide a fine-needle device to obtain a viable tissue sample through aspiration biopsy. If cancer is detected, clinicians would use radiofrequency ablation to treat the cancer immediately at that time.
The image-guided approach also enables in vivo visualization of tumor morphology, as well as acquisition of metabolic, functional, and molecular imaging information at the cellular level.
Wong collaborated with Dr. Marshall Hicks, an interventional radiologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston, to evaluate the clinical feasibility of the image-guided system.
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